Shockingly expensive Pokémon watch costs more than most people make in several years

As an anime franchise gets older, it’s common for some of its associated merchandise to move upmarket. Look at, for example, Sailor Moon, the new merch for which is often premium-priced (though not always), in order to align with the quality expectations and bigger budgets of now-adult fans who feel the fingers of nostalgia prying open their wallets.

So it’s not all that shocking to come across expensive Pokémon stuff. After all, even the kids who were still in elementary school when the anime started airing in 1997 (or 1998 for the English version), are now entering their 30s, and some of them are hitting the peak earning years of lucrative careers.

And so Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome thinks that somewhere out there is a fan willing to spend big bucks on this cool-looking luxury Pokémon watch.

While Pikachu, of course, occupies the center position of the colorful 48-millimeter (1.9-inch) watch face, the designers realize that every Pokémon fan has his or her personal favorite Pocket Monster, and so there are 16 other specimens accompanying the franchise mascot. That’s 17 Pokémon, all on one watch! Oh, and a quick bit of math tells us that each one will essentially cost you a little over 15 grand, since Romain Jerome is asking £200,000 (US$259,511) for the timepiece.

▼ Pikachu used CREDIT CARD!…It’s maxed out!

Officially called the Tourbillon Pokémon, the manufacturer describes it as “The perfect alchemy between a prestigious horological complication and the emblem of the millennials” (for those of you without a dictionary function on your Pokédex, “horological” means “related to the science of measuring time”).

The large required outlay does get you some cool features. The dial is hand-crafted, and the watch has a 60-hour power supply, meaning it’ll still be keeping time long after you’ve drained your smartphone battery playing Pokémon GO. The strap is made from alligator hide (perhaps to appease Feraligatr fans upset about their Pokémon of choice being left off the watch face), with blue and yellow stitching evocative of the colors used in the official Pokémon logo. The oscillating weight is shaped like Pikachu, and even the tourbillon bridge (a component meant to eliminate gravity-induced timekeeping errors) salutes to the star Pokémon with its lightning bolt motif.

Oh, and the watch is also water resistant to a depth of 50 meters (164 feet), which is great news if you like to go swimming or diving with several years’ of an average person’s salary strapped to your wrist.

But while there are some mighty big grown-up Pokémon fans in the world, even Romain Jerome realizes this is a product for only the hardest of the hard-core, and so production of the Tourbillon Pokémon is being limited to just one unit, making it rarer than any in-game Pokémon has ever been.